Chapter 14 14. Appendix II: Essays by Marthe Lawritz Brig (excerpts)

I think now because I'm learning to watch, I have to get up and do some work.I am twenty-eight years old, which means I have never done anything.Let's count: I wrote a study of Calbasio, but it was bad;Ah, as for poetry: it won't do any good if it's written too early.We should wait all our lives, as long as possible, to collect the true meaning and essence, and finally we may be able to write ten lines of good poetry.Because poetry is not emotion as most people say (people have already had enough emotion),—poetry is experience.To make a poem we have to see many cities, people and things, we have to know animals, we have to feel how birds fly, and know the gesture of little flowers when they open in the morning.We must be able to recall: the journeys in foreign lands, the unexpected encounters, the approaching partings;--recalling the years of childhood that were not yet clear; To distress them (that is a pleasure to another); to think of children's sicknesses, strange seizures, so many profound changes, to think of the silent, dreary hut's day and seaside mornings, of the sea, To think of many seas, of nights of travel, in which all sounds sing and stars dance,--but that is not enough, if all this can be imagined.We must recall many nights of love, each different from the other, remembering the pained cry of the laborer and the softly sleeping, shivering mother in white.

But we have also been with the dying, sat beside the dead, made sudden noises in small rooms with open windows.We have memories, but not enough.If there are many memories, we must be able to forget them, and we must have great endurance to wear them again.Because mere memories don't count.Until they become the blood in us, our glances and gestures, nameless and indistinguishable from ourselves any more, that will be fulfilled, and at one rare moment the first word of a line forms in their center, standing out . But none of my poems are written like this, so they are not poems. —and how wrong I was when I wrote my plays.Am I a mocker and a fool?In order to tell the fate of two people who make each other unhappy, I need a third person.How easy it is for me to fall into such a trap.I should have known long ago that this third person who permeates all life and literature and art, the ghost of this third person who has never existed, is meaningless and we must reject him.He was one of the pretexts of a nature that always seeks to keep its innermost secrets from being noticed.He is a screen behind which a play is played out.He is a din, at the doorway into the soundless silence of a real conflict.People like to think this way, but it is always too difficult for everyone to talk about only the two main characters in the play; this third person, just because he is not real, is the easy part of the problem, and everyone can handle him.At the beginning of their drama we perceive the anxiety about the third party, they can hardly wait any longer.As soon as he arrives, everything will be fine.How boring it would be if he was late, nothing could happen without him, everything stood still, waiting.So what to do, if it only stays in this situation of stagnation and delay?So what to do, Mr. Dramatist, and the audience you know life, what to do if he disappears, this pleasing enjoyer of life, or this arrogant young man, who fits in all A false key in the couple's lock?What if the devil took him away?Let's assume that.

We suddenly become aware of the many artificial emptinesses in the theater, which are blocked up like dangerous holes, and only moths pass through the unstable gaps from the railings of the boxes.Dramatists no longer enjoy their villas.All public detectives seek for them in remote worlds the indispensable man who is the content of the drama itself. But those who live in the human world are not these "third parties", but two people. There are so many unexpected things that can be said about these two people, but they have not said anything about them. Can not help themselves. This is ridiculous.Here I sit in my cabin, and I, Brig, am twenty-eight years old, and nobody knows me.I sit here and I am nothingness.But this nothingness began to think, and on the fifth floor, one gray Parisian afternoon, it came up with the thought: Is it possible, it thought, that one has not yet seen, known, spoken the true with important things?Is it possible that people have had thousands of years to see, contemplate, record, and they let these millennia pass like a break in school, during which time they ate a loaf of bread and butter and a apple?

Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that people, despite their many inventions and advancements, despite their culture, religion, and wisdom, remain stagnant on the surface of life?Is it possible that one even covers this surface, which is anyway meaningful, with an unexpectedly nasty cloth, making it look like furniture in a sandbox on a summer holiday? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that all world history has been misunderstood?Is it possible that the past is false, since one always speaks of its mass, as of a confluence of many, without speaking of the individual around whom they are estranged and dead?

Yes, it is possible. Is it possible, it is believed, to make up for what happened before his birth?Is it possible that each individual must be reminded that he was born from all predecessors, so that he knows this and should not be persuaded by those who know otherwise? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that all these people are well aware of a past that never existed?Is it possible, that all reality is nothing to them; their life slips by, irrelevant, like a clock in an empty room—? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that nobody knows anything about girls and yet they live?Is it possible that people say "women", "children", "boys" without feeling (not even with education) that these words have long since lost their plural, but are only innumerable in the singular?

Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that some people, when they say "God," think that is some common thing? —Look at two schoolboys: one bought himself a pocket knife, and his companion bought the same one that day.A week later, when they took out the two knives to each other, the two knives appeared very different,--they developed so differently in different hands. (Yes, said the mother of a schoolboy: you always wear everything out at once.—) Ah, so: is it possible.Do you believe that everyone can have a god and not use him? Yes, it is possible. If all this is possible, even if it is only an illusion of possibility—then, for all things in the world, something should happen.Anyone with these disturbing thoughts must start doing something that is delayed, even if it's just anyone who is totally inappropriate: there just happens to be no one else here.The young, insignificant foreigner, Brig, would be on the fifth floor, writing day and night: yes, he had to write, it would be a home.

* * * I sit and read a poet.There are many people in the hall (of the National Library of Paris), but none of them can be felt. They sink into books.They sometimes moved as they turned the pages of a book, like sleepers turning between two dreams. Ah, how good it is, to be among people who read.Why aren't they always like this?You can walk up to a person and touch the ground lightly: he feels nothing.If you touch your neighbor when you get up, ask his pardon, he nods in the direction from which he heard your voice, turns his face to you, but does not see you, and his hair seems to be Sleeper's hair.How comfortable it is.I'm sitting here and I have a poet.What a fate.There were about three hundred people reading in the hall now; but it was impossible to add that each of them had a poet. (God knows what they read.) There won't be three hundred poets.But behold, what a fate, I, perhaps the poorest of these readers, a foreigner: I have a poet.Although I am poor.Although the clothes I wear every day have begun to show a few flaws; although my shoes have a few places that can be blamed.But my collar is clean, and my shirt is clean, and I can walk past any candy store as I do, as far as a busy street can, and reach boldly with my hand for a pastry plate, to Grab some refreshments.Perhaps people would not be surprised by this, would not scold me, and throw me out, because anyway, it was a hand of the upper class, a hand that had to be washed four or three times a day.Yes, there is no dirt under the nails, no ink marks on the fingers holding the pen, and especially the wrist is impeccable.It is a well-known fact that poor people wash only up to the wrist.One can infer certain conclusions from its cleanliness.That's what people infer.That's how it is in the store.But there are a few survivors, such as in Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue Racine, who are not deluded and look down on this question of artifice.They looked at me and knew what was going on.They knew that I was originally one of them, that I was just doing some comedy.This is exactly the Masquerade Fasting Festival.They didn't want to catch my trick; they just bared their teeth and winked.No one saw it either.Besides they treat me like a lord.They even groveled when anyone was around.It was as if I was wearing a leather jacket and my car was following me.Sometimes I offered them two small coins, and I trembled lest they should refuse; but they did.And all would be well if they stopped baring their teeth and blinking their eyes.Who are these people?What do they want from me?Are they waiting for me?

How do they know me?That's true, my beard has grown a bit, and there's something quite reminiscent of their sick, old, dull beards that have always left an impression on me.But I don't have the right to ignore the beard a bit?Many busy people don't shave often, but no one thinks about it, so they are included in the ranks of the abandoned.I understand that they are outcasts, not just beggars; no, they are not beggars in the first place, people must distinguish clearly.They are scum, human husks that fate spits out.Wet by the saliva of fate, they stick to walls, under street lamps, beside advertising posts, or slowly slip down small alleys with a dark and dirty trail behind them.In the vast universe, what does this old woman want from me?She crawled out of a certain hole, holding a drawer of the bedside table in her hand, and some buttons and needles were rolling around in it.Why does she always walk next to me and pay attention to me?It was as if she wanted to know me with her tearful eyes, as if a sick man had spat yellow phlegm on the blood-red eyelids.And what about that pale, thin woman who stood beside me for a quarter of an hour in front of a shop window while she showed me a long old pencil that was very slowly Pushed from her skinny hands clasped tightly together.I pretended to be unaware of the products displayed in the window.

But she knew I saw her, she knew I was standing and thinking, what the hell is she doing.For I understand that it's not about the pencil: it's a sign, I feel, a sign for those in the know, a sign known to the outcasts; somewhere to go, or something to do. The strangest thing was that I couldn't shake the feeling that it would actually be some kind of date, that this mark was for that date; This was two weeks ago.Hardly a day goes by today without such an encounter.Not only at dusk, but also at noon on a crowded street, a little man or an old woman would suddenly nod, show me something, and then walk away, as if doing everything important. It's over.It is probable that they will remember one day, come to my cottage, they must know where I live, and they have already arranged that the porter will not stop them.But here, my dear ones, you cannot break through.People must have a special reading pass to enter this hall.I already have this reading card before you.One can imagine that I walked across the street a little timidly, but finally stood in front of a glass door, pushed it open, as if at home, and showed the reading card at the second door (exactly like you show me something) It seems that there is only this difference, people understand and understand my mind—), so I am in the middle of these books, separated from you, as if dead, I sit and read a poet.

You don't know what it is; a poet? —Verlaine ②... No more?Can't remember? can't remember.You do not distinguish him among the poets you know?I know, you don't know the difference. But I was reading another poet,3 who didn't live in Paris, and was quite another.A poet who has a quiet house in the mountains.He made a sound like a bell in a clear sky.A happy poet, who tells of his windows and the glass doors of his bookcases, which broodingly reflect lovely, lonely distances.This is the poet I should be looking for; because he knows so much about girls, and I should know as much as I do.He knew the girls who lived a hundred years ago; they were all dead, and it didn't matter because he knew everything.This is the first thing.He uttered their names, those lithe and beautiful names written in elongated letters with old-fashioned patterns, and the grown-up names of their older girlfriends, and there was already some resonance of fate, some disappointment and death .Perhaps in a compartment of his mahogany desk were their faded letters and loose pages of their diaries, recording birthdays, summer excursions, birthdays.Or perhaps there was a drawer on the square-bellied table of drawers at the back of his dormitory where they kept their early spring dresses; white dresses first worn at Easter; summer clothes.Ah, what a happy fate, to be in the quiet cottage of an ancestral house, among the fixed and quiet things, to hear outside the verdant garden the audition of the first chickadee, and the village bell tolling in the distance.Sitting there, looking at a warm afternoon sun, knowing many things about the girls of the past, being a poet.I think I would be such a poet, too, if I could live somewhere, somewhere in the world, in one of the many closed villas that no one cares about.I may only use one room (the bright one under the roof).I live there with my old stuff, family portraits and books.I also have an armchair, flowers, dogs, and a solid walking stick for quarrying.Nothing else.A book bound in buff ivory leather with flower patterns was a must: I should write there.I will write a lot, because I have many thoughts and many memories.

But it didn't, God knows why.My old furniture was rotting away in storage, and I myself, oh my God, had no roof over my head and fell in my eyes. ① Carpaccio (Carpaccio, 1455-1526) a famous Italian painter. ② Paul Verlaine (Paul Verlaine, 1844-1896), a famous French symbolist poet. ③ Refers to Francis Jammes (1868-1938), a French poet and novelist.